Sticking with "nostalgia" stories...I know I've told a number of them about HARD northern Indiana winters. The "worst" I remember was having to walk to and from my Junior High in waist-high snow at twenty degrees below zero for two and a half miles.

I KNOW that sounds like one of those "You young 'uns got it so DAMNED EASY! Why, when I was a kid..." stories. Over the years you begin to doubt the accuracy of your stories, even if you DO repeat them.

So, I got on the web, and looked up my old Junior High in South Bend Indiana. It was Muessel Junior High back in 1962-63, and was built in 1890. Cool old building, actually. Well, times change. It's gone, and was been replaced (not all that long ago!), but retains the name and is still on the same city property.

Then I google-mapped it, and counted the city blocks between it and my home, on the exact route I most often used. Alright! I'm NOT a nostalgic old freak who has twisted his old stories into pathetically dramatic and heroic episodes (which is a great relief)! The route is sixteen blocks long. I don't know how to turn blocks into feet or miles, but it seems to me I have it right... I had to walk to and from my Junior High in waist-high snow at twenty degrees below zero for two and a half miles.

Excellent! (Except for the distance, waist high snow, and twenty below...)

Hey, we WERE tough Back Then. We grew our own popcorn! We didn't go namby pamby to a store and buy it in a sack! We planted our own pop corn kernels, we'd water the land every day, and by the end of the summer the stalks were up and green. We'd harvest the ear or two of popcorn that made it, then slaughter a pig, fry it up, get some pig grease which we'd then heat over a fire to pop the corn, and we'd get 8 or 9 pieces of popcorn out of all that work, and BY GOD we ENJOYED it and we were GRATEFUL for what we got, damnit!

We were TOUGH.

If we wanted SALT on those 8 or 9 kernals, we had to dig it out of the ground ourselves... with STICKS, damnit!

We made our own popcorn bowls out of mud. We dried them in the hot Indiana sun, and then fired them in a homemade kiln powered by pig fat lit with a homemade magnifying glass we fashioned from polished fish scales. That's right!!

We were TOUGH.

God, THOSE were the GOOD old days... when men were men, and boys were men, and the girls were almost boys who were men. We were ALL tough.

TOUGH, DAMNIT!!!

And we LIKED it that way! Superman was nothing but a slightly stronger member of our Clan. We ate ROCKS until those 8 or 9 kernels of popcorn were ready. Wimps would wash the dirt off the rocks. Not me and MY friends!

No way.

Damnit.